In millitary terms a ‘CF’ – aka Charlie Foxtrot – aka ‘clusterfuck’ is a disastrous situation that results from the cumulative errors of several people or groups. If there is one case where this word is appropriate, I would say it is the Ahold court case. In short: Ahold is one of the world’s largest supermarket operators and one of the world’s largest foodservice and retail companies. In 2003 Ahold suddenly got into financial troubles because of fraud within its US Foodservice subsidiary. After an investigation it turned out there were more troubles and this made Ahold stocks loose more that one third over night. In an unusual step the Dutch Justice department decided to start a criminal case against the former VP’s and financial board members of Ahold. Today was the 10th day in court and it has become painfully clear how Ahold was trying to exhagerate how much companies it owned. In fact, most of the courtcase has been about the ‘creative’ bookkeeping Ahold did and in particular the way it was consolidating it’s assets. For instance, Ahold would say it had a controlling share in company X, while in fact they did not. The most stupid thing they did was to give their accountant (Deloitte) letters in which the companies would declare Ahold had a controlling share, but on the other hand there were co-called ‘side letters’ that proved this wasn’t true. By adding the joint-ventures to their assets (only legal is you have a controlling share) Ahold owned more money on paper that in reality.
Just like any other case of this kind of corporate crime, it has become clear that all key people involved all did what they did because of their enormous ego. It seems that even the Dutch (usually really down to earth: “act normal, thats crazy enough”) are not impervious to the rush that comes with money and fame.